Iowa State: NCAA case started with hoops aide

April 11, 2013

Iowa State released fresh details Wednesday of its internal investigation into NCAA recruiting violations, saying it found "a significant number" of impermissible calls and text messages made by coaches in football, men's basketball and several other sports.

The report said Iowa State's two-year investigation started with the discovery of improper contacts with recruits by Keith Moore, a former Cyclones player who was working in his first year as an undergraduate student coach under men's basketball coach Fred Hoiberg.

The report said Hoiberg ran into Moore in 2011 at one of Hoiberg's son's AAU games. Hoiberg asked why he was present at the game and whether he'd been contacting recruits. Moore acknowledged that he had been in contact with high school players that he had coached previously in AAU, the report said.

Hoiberg reported the incident to the athletics department, which removed Moore of his duties with the team and started an investigation. The basketball team also stopped recruiting two players from Moore's former AAU team, the All Iowa Attack.

Moore played at Iowa State from 1978-81. He was offered a chance to return to school as part of the athletic department's continuing education program in 2010 and assigned to work with the men's basketball team in return for Iowa State paying for his tuition, fees and books.

Moore did not respond to NCAA investigators' request for a statement on the case, and he did not immediately return an e-mail message seeking comment. A phone listing for Moore could not be found.

The report has been turned over to the NCAA's Committee on Infractions, though there's no specific timetable on when it might rule on the case.

The report says an audit of three years of telephone and text messaging by coaching staff found "a significant number of recruiting communication violations involving most of its sports programs." Moore sent 160 impermissible text messages to his former AAU players, including two that were being recruited by Iowa State at the time, the report found.

Coaches made 24 "clear-cut intentional" telephone call violations, and other employees made 55 impermissible calls, the report found. Employees failed to log another 1,400 calls that failed to connect with recruits for reasons such as no answer or dropped calls, the report said. In all, the university faulted itself for failing to monitor the calls.

The university said the improper calls were a tiny fraction of the 750,000 that were reviewed over the three-year period involving all 18 sports programs.

But six current and former coaches in men's basketball and football were named in the report for acknowledging personal involvement and could face further discipline.

The university said it agreed with NCAA's enforcement staff that the findings "constitute a major infractions case," given the number and frequency of telephone call violations and the volume of messages sent by Moore.

The university has asked the NCAA to accept its findings and issue a punishment of two years of probation, retroactive to November of 2011.

But six current and former coaches in men's basketball and football were named in the report for acknowledging personal involvement and could face further discipline.

"We've been committed to being as transparent as possible throughout this entire process, which has been challenging given it has been an ongoing investigation and we did not receive the final report until this week," Jamie Pollard, the Iowa State athletic director, said in a statement.

Iowa State spokesman Steve Malchow told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Pollard was out of his office and unavailable for further comment, adding that the NCAA discourages school officials to publicly comment on ongoing cases.

The school said that it has already self-imposed numerous penalties. Each of its teams forfeited a week of recruiting calls, and the school will spend $82,000 over the next three years in compliance and recruiting software to simplify the recording and monitoring of calls and text messages.

The Cyclones also said they've already taken a wide range of punitive actions against each of the coaches named in the report.

The university hired The Compliance Group, based in Lanexa, Kan., to assist in the investigation. Records released to The Associated Press on Wednesday show the firm billed the school more than $30,000 for its services.

This is the second major infractions case Iowa State has been involved with.

In 1986, the Cyclones were put on two years of probation because of violations within the football program.